(a) Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to heat sink technology, and more particularly to a heat transfer plate and heat pipe mounting structure and method for enabling a metal heat transfer plate and at least one flat heat pipe to be tightly fastened together in a flush manner.
(b) Description of the Prior Art
With fast development of modern technology, commercial mobile electronic devices, such as cell phone, notebook computer, tablet computer, iPad, PAD, GAS, etc., commonly have the flat, thin and compact characteristics with powerful computing capabilities. During operation of these mobile electronic devices, the internal CPU, IC and/or other heat generating components will generate a large amount of waste heat that must be quickly expelled to ensure normal functioning of the components and to prolong their lifespan.
For cooling a compact mobile electronic device, it is the common way to bond a metal heat transfer plate to the surface of the CPU, IC or any other heat generating component for absorbing waste heat and carrying waste heat away from the CPU, IC or any other heat generating component. However, this heat dissipation method has a low efficiency and cannot rapidly expel heat, and therefore a heat accumulation problem can occur easily, causing crash or component damage.
In order to accelerate heat dissipation, Taiwan Patent M459692 teaches the use of heat pipes with a metal heat transfer plate by means of directly bonding flat heat pipes to the surface of a metal heat transfer plate. A flat heat pipe for this application has a thickness about 0.6 mm. After the flat heat pipes are bonded to the metal heat transfer plate, the overall thickness of the combination will be larger than 0.6 mm. Thus, a mobile electronic device must provide a sufficient internal chamber for accommodating the metal heat transfer plate and heat pipe combination and other related components, increasing the device height. Therefore, the aforesaid prior art metal heat transfer plate and heat pipe combination is not practical for low profile application.